


Everything That Falls Down Eventually Rises

by bayloriffic



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-18
Updated: 2011-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-23 20:15:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bayloriffic/pseuds/bayloriffic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She reaches out and grabs his wrist, holds it tight enough that he can feel the bones grinding together, and it feels better than anything has in months.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything That Falls Down Eventually Rises

For the first few weeks after Sawyer and Juliet start sleeping together, everything goes great. Perfect, even. They never fight; never yell or scream at each other or even argue.

 

When they talk, it’s always pleasant and polite; what’s for dinner, what hours they’re working this week, whose turn it is to do the laundry. It’s driving Sawyer insane.

 

He’s started to feel jittery whenever she’s around, all bottled up with tension.

 

He thinks about talking to her about it, but whenever he tries to catch her eye, she’s always looking somewhere else.

 

**

 

They eat lunch together most days, just the two of them sitting across from each other at a table off to the side in the cafeteria.

 

Usually they just talk about their days and Dharma gossip and what they should have for dinner, whose turn it is to cook.

 

Never about flaming arrows or disappearing freighters or if they’re going to make it through the day alive.

 

Sawyer figures it should be comforting, not having to constantly be on the lookout for danger or death, not constantly fighting or arguing with someone. Should make him feel peaceful or content or some other damn feeling that he’s never actually experienced.

 

But mostly it just makes him feel lonelier than he has in years.

 

**

 

At night, they take turns making dinner.

 

Sawyer’s learning how to make more than just grilled cheese sandwiches and canned soup. Figures that pretty soon he’ll be giving Martha Stewart a run for her money.

 

He bumbles around the kitchen every other night, Juliet leaning up against the wall sipping a glass of wine as she walks him through recipes, teases him about not being able to do something as simple as boiling pasta.

 

After they eat, they sit on opposite ends of the couch and read, the house quiet and warm with the humid island air.

 

Mostly, it’s fine. He’s getting almost as much reading done as he did right after the crash, when no one would talk to him and he had nothing else to do but sit on the beach and think of ways to piss people off.

 

But some nights the quiet gets to him, makes it hard for him to concentrate on anything, and he finds himself reading the same few paragraphs over and over again.

 

On those nights, he spends more time than he’d like to admit glancing at Juliet out of the corner of his eye, silently willing her to notice, to look back at him. But she never does and so he ends up just forcing himself to focus on his book, the silence pressing down on him like a stone.

 

**

 

They have sex in their bed, always in their bed, surrounded by pillows, wrapped in clean sheets, never on the floor. Or anywhere else in the house for that matter.

 

Never out in the jungle.

 

It’s all very polite and civilized and it feels to Sawyer like this whole thing’s a scam. Like Jim LaFleur isn’t just a show he’s putting on for these Dharma idiots, but for her as well.

 

And he hates that. Because this thing with Juliet ain’t a con. He’s not quite sure what it is, but he knows it’s not that.

 

**

 

They don’t talk about their pasts. It’s all part of who they are now. What they are now.

 

He pretends she never kept him locked in a cage and she pretends he never tried to get the other survivors to kick her out of their camp. They both pretend he didn’t end up here because he loved someone else too much, or not enough. He’s not sure which anymore.

 

Besides, he tells himself, it ain’t like it matters. That’s not who is he now. He’s Jim LaFleur, shipwrecked captain, upstanding citizen of Dharma Island, all-around good guy.

 

The thing is, though, he doesn’t picture himself like that when he’s with her. But he’s starting to think that’s maybe she does.

 

When it comes right down to it, he’s getting pretty fucking sick of women on this island only being with him because of who he’s not.

 

**

 

They’re in the kitchen one night and Sawyer’s making spaghetti, which is as advanced as his culinary skills have gotten, while Juliet sits at the table, reading Carrie for what he guesses is probably the twentieth time.

 

He drains the pasta and reaches over to grab the marinara sauce and the bottle slips from his fingers, shatters on the floor.

 

“Shit,” he mutters, looking down at the mess. Making dinner sucks, he thinks, and suddenly misses the jungle and the beach and mangoes and fish.

 

“Need help?” Juliet asks, but she doesn’t get up from the table, barely even looks up from her book.

 

“Nah,” he says. “I got it.”

 

He crosses the kitchen to get the broom and steps on a piece of glass. “Son of a bitch!” he yells, and he sees Juliet flinch out of the corner of his eye.

 

He leans against the counter and raises his foot, sees a shard of broken glass embedded pretty deep in his toe and he can’t tell what’s blood and what’s tomato sauce and this whole situation just seems completely absurd.

 

“James,” Juliet says. She’s finally put her book down and her voice has that condescending, patient tone he’s starting to hate. “Sit down and let me look at it.”

 

“What the hell do you care?” he snaps.

 

“I’m sorry?” she asks, but her tone doesn’t change. She still sounds like she’s talking to a five-year-old and he’s so goddamn sick of all of this, of acting like this is normal, of her pretending like she cares.

 

“Nothin’. Forget it.” He pushes past her, limps down the hall into the bathroom and slams the door.

 

He pulls the glass out of his foot with a pair of tweezers and runs cold water over the cut, stares down at the watery blood circling around the drain. He looks up at his reflection in the mirror, at his clean shaven face and his too-long hair, and he’s got no fucking idea what he’s doing.

 

He stays in there a lot longer than it takes him to clean off his foot and slap a band-aid on it. Braces his hands against the sink and just stares at himself in the mirror for a while.

 

After a few minutes, he hears Juliet moving around in the kitchen, the clink of the glass as she cleans up after him.

 

**

 

When he walks into their bedroom, Juliet is sitting on the bed, staring blankly down at the floor.

 

He sits next to her, makes sure to keep some space between them. She looks over at him, and there’s a kind of desperate, wild look in her eyes, and he has no idea what she’s thinking.

 

Before he gets the chance to ask her, she leans over and kisses him, pushes her tongue into his mouth, bites his lip hard enough to draw blood. She reaches out and grabs his wrist, holds it tight enough that he can feel the bones grinding together, and it feels better than anything has in months.

 

Sawyer realizes that it’s fucked up that this makes him feel better, but he doesn’t care. Because he also understands that you can’t change who you are, what’s done is done, and, when it comes right down to it, this is all he’s ever known.

 

So he kisses her back as hard as he can, digs his fingers into the sharp bones of her hip until she cries out.

 

**

 

Lying in bed afterward, her back to him and the purple bruises from his fingertips stark against the white of her skin, she says, “Do you feel better now?”

 

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he asks sharply, and he’s just so tired.

 

She turns around so she’s facing him, so close her lips are brushing his, and whispers against his mouth, “Nothing.”

 

She shakes her head a little, her hair tickling his face, and brushes her fingertips lightly over the scratches on his arm, smearing the blood that’s welled up there. Says quietly, “It’s just…I can’t be someone I’m not.”

 

He feels like he might throw up, and he thinks that of all the things she could have said, that was probably the worst. “Yeah, well,” he says, his voice muffled against her skin, “neither can I.”

 

**

 

She’s gone the next morning when he wakes up and as he looks around the empty room, the sick feeling from the night before comes back. Like there’s a knot in his stomach that’s never going to go away.

 

He walks out into the kitchen, his footsteps loud and echoing down the hallway, and thinks that he’s never going to escape the silence of this damn house.

 

When he gets there, he sees her breakfast dishes soaking in the sink and there’s a note on the table reminding him that there are clean jumpsuits hanging on the clothesline outside and when he reads it it’s like he remembers how to breathe.

 

**

 

He stops by the motor pool around lunchtime, just like he always does.

 

He has some vague ideas about apologizing to her about last night, although he has no idea what he’ll say or even what he should apologize for.

 

Juliet’s leaning against one of the Volkswagen vans, laughing and talking to a guy in a navy blue motor pool jumpsuit, and when she sees Sawyer she stops laughing, gives him a little nod. Doesn’t smile.

 

She walks over a few seconds later, wiping her grease-stained hands on an old towel. “Hey.”

 

“Hey.” His voice sounds weird to him, too soft or something, and he clears his throat before continuing. “Ready for lunch?”

 

“Yeah.” Her voice sounds strange to him, too, and he wonders how long they’re going to do this.

 

They walk in silence the rest of the way to the cafeteria, not touching, careful to keep the distance between them and, when they reach the door, he decides that’s enough. He reaches out and puts his hand on her forearm, tightens his fingers slightly.

 

Juliet stops and stares at his hand on her arm, doesn’t pull away, but doesn’t say anything either.

 

They’re just standing there in the doorway and people are dodging around them to get in and out of the building, so Sawyer looks around, trying to figure out someplace private they can go to talk for a few minutes, but for some reason the whole of the barracks is teeming with people.

 

Finally, he ends up just leading her behind the cafeteria, where it’s quiet and empty.

 

When they get there, she looks away from him, out towards the jungle, and for the first time, he considers the possibility that she’d rather be out there than in here with him.

 

She turns back to him, and the look on her face makes his chest feels strangely tight, like his heart’s beating too fast, or maybe not fast enough. He’s not sure which.

 

This is it, he thinks and the knot is back in his stomach, this is it.

 

He waits for her to say it, to tell him that this, whatever this is, it just ain’t working anymore.

 

But she surprises him. Doesn’t say anything, just steps closer to him and kisses him softly on the corner of the mouth.

 

“Juliet,” he says, his voice quiet and serious.

 

She brushes the hair away from his face and whispers against his cheek, “James.” She doesn’t move away from him, her breath warm against his lips, and she’s so close, closer than she’s been in weeks. “I’m sorry,” she says and she sounds more like herself than she has in a while.

 

He knows he should ask her what she’s sorry for. Ask her what the hell she wants from him. But he doesn’t really feel like talking now, not with her standing so close to him, finally looking at him like she actually sees him.

 

Instead, he presses his lips against hers, kisses her like he can make her understand all the things he wants to say to her, that he’s wanted to say for weeks.

 

She kisses him back, puts her hand on the back of his neck and runs her tongue softly over the bite marks that she made on his lip last night.

 

He pushes her gently against the side of the building, careful of the bruises he knows are on her hip, and he wants to touch her skin, feel her against him, but they’re both wearing those damn jumpsuits, the thick fabric coarse and scratchy against his hands.

 

So he reaches up and grabs the zipper on hers, pulls it down and slides the ugly blue fabric off her shoulders. She’s still wearing a T-shirt, but it’s better than it was and he slides his hands under her shirt, skims his fingers over her warm, soft skin.

 

She stops kissing him for a second to help him take off his clothes, and he worries for a brief moment that someone’s going to see them, but she slips her hand inside his boxers and wraps her hand around him and the thought slides from his mind.

 

Sawyer lifts her up so she can wrap her legs around him and he pushes inside of her, tries to be gentle. She inhales sharply, doesn’t make any other sounds, and he whispers her name over and over again into her ear.

 

She rocks against him and he grabs her hips, pulls her closer, and she lets out a little hiss of pain as his hands press against the bruises there. He starts to apologize, but her body tenses and she shudders against him, bites down on his shoulder to keep from yelling out.

 

A few seconds later, she raises her head and opens her eyes, looks straight at him, and that’s all he needs. He comes, gasping her name.

 

They stand like that for a while, pressed together against the building, waiting for their breathing to slow down, return to something like normal. He’s got one hand braced against the splintery wall of the cafeteria for balance, one hand against her back holding her up, and his arms are getting kind of tired, but he doesn’t want to let her go just yet.

 

“So,” he says, once he catches his breath, “is this how you’re plannin’ on solvin’ all our fights from now on?” He smirks at her, with something like his old bravado, and for the first time in a long time, he feels like himself.

 

She laughs easily, and it feels like something’s shifted between them.

 

When he looks at her, she holds his gaze, smiles like she means it.

 

**

end


End file.
